Without doubt our emotions have been wrong. To say that our emotions are right is not my point. Rather, i am suggesting at trying to understand what is being suggested and why. Posters are offering the ills of Walmart as justification for inflicting nominal damage on Walmart. This is very much discordant with our current legal system. So the questions that should be addressed to meet in the actual disagreement is how ought we mete out justice and why.
I agree with you that our current justice system is better than enabling vigilantism.
I think we agree on a lot of things here.
If Walmart is guilty of some crime or is doing something that is legal, but still wrong, how does one go about making sure that the company and the relevant employees are brought to justice.
I think pointing out that emotions are a shaking ground on which to base action is important to mention even if it is not a point that either of us is promoting.
Most technology has risks. Cars have the risk of accident and weaponization. Chemical discovery programs could end up creating a carcinogen so virulent it could reduce the human population. Some of the risks are greater than others. Some are trivial, but not zero. People have argued against the deployment of some technology using the precautionary principle as the basis. If there is even a trivial or non-zero chance something could go wrong, we should opt out of discovery, creation or production and distribution as a precaution. The flip side to that is the sometimes trivial chance that not doing something could have an equally devastating unintended consequence. I personally know about this from the point of genetically modified plants. Some people feel that despite all the regulation and testing, the very minute chance that something could go wrong should be enough to cause companies to be forced to withdraw from their production and farmers to be kept from their use. But what if we did and in some future time, an issue develops that genetic modification could have dealt with, but is not there for us. The development of some new, virulent plant disease, the consequences of climate change, or something we have not even thought of could jeopardize our food security. It is much the same argument I have seen used against abortion. A nurse or a paramedic is depicted as having survived abortion and we are to see how bad it would be if that person was not there to save the lives they have saved. Of course, the flip side is Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, etc. For every conceivable reason to be cautious, no matter how trivial, there are equal reasons to press on.
I find myself in the awkward position of having spent so much time writing this last paragraph, that I have forgotten why I was writing it. It had something to do with your post and I apologize for now not being able to tie it together. I cannot blame a teleprompter for this and must accept my responsibility, but I am leaving it here just in case I recall my thoughts.